Author: poetry

Carefully observe the environment around you, the items you use, the clothes you wear, and the words you use in communication. In fact, different symbols are flowing. Symbols can be regarded as a kind of ideological medium. We can understand the world through symbols, and we can also create a world through symbols.

Symbols in the real world, we can perceive, see, and even touch. As for the symbols in the online world, we can only see that what these symbols constitute is a virtual world, which is a simulated environment generated by a computer connected to the brain. We live in a virtual reality generated by supercomputers. In this virtual reality, many objects and behaviors in the real world are mapped, and sometimes people can't tell the real from the fake. For example, at the press conference held by Nvidia in April this year, a digital human stand-in of CEO Huang Renxun was created to participate in the press conference through data 3D modeling, AI, rendering, cloud computing and other technologies. And not only are the people fake, but the scenes, objects, and decorations of the press conference are all rendered virtual existences. In the entire press conference, there were almost no real items, and no one discovered all of this.

The development of technology has been able to blur the boundary between virtual and reality.

In the early years, everyone's understanding of the virtual world was the Internet world. The advent of the Internet has upended the lives of most people. People have discovered that behavior patterns in the real world such as communication, work, shopping, entertainment, etc. can be completely migrated to the Internet. Online shopping and social networking can not only save communication costs but also make our lives more convenient. The development of the "attention economy" allows us to make money by swiping our mobile phones when we are idle; in the age of traffic, ordinary people can also get out of the circle and be known by everyone. The Internet seems to have created another human world, a world where the body can be dominated, owned, and worked without being present.

However, let’s take a closer look at it now. It seems too narrow to equate “virtual” with the Internet. The Internet is not the final form of "virtuality". "Virtuality" is often a symbolic and digital existence. The meaning of virtuality may profoundly change the original way of human existence.

The fast-growing metaverse

Self-transcendence is the constant pursuit of human beings, and this pursuit includes the exploration and understanding of the natural world, human society and culture, and the position of human beings in it. In order to survive and develop better, early humans broke through the limitations of natural species and were able to purposefully use artificial tools to transform the external environment. With the development of technology, virtual reality, cloud computing, blockchain and other technologies have transferred human beings from the traditional activity platform based on matter and energy to a new platform based on bits and computing power, and created a brand new Living Space - Metaverse.

In March of this year, the listing of Roblox, the first stock of the metaverse concept, kicked off the prelude to the metaverse, making it one of the hottest concepts in the technology field in 2021.

Building the metaverse is inseparable from infrastructure such as AI, VR, communication technology, cloud computing, and blockchain. Here, blockchain technology can provide a decentralized economic system and asset ownership, making it easier for the prototype of the metaverse to land. Users and platforms also have high expectations for this.

The game is the entrance to the metaverse, and it is also the place where everyone can feel and experience the metaverse most intuitively. Axie Infinity is the first to take advantage of this wave of east wind to rise. Axie Infinity grew from 38,000 daily active users to 252,000 in two months, and its community coffers grew from less than $1 million to over $14 million. Axie Infinity currently has a market cap of $4.3 billion.

The popularity of Axie Infinity has made many people see the explosive speed of the metaverse, and the P2E model has also been copied in a large number in a short period of time. At present, there are as many as 361 games on Play 2 earn, and 25,835 NFTs. They have also driven the development of the entire currency circle and ushered in a new wave of enthusiasm.

OpenSea, the largest marketplace for NFT transactions, grew 286% from July to August. Now three days in a row it has set a record, with $195 million in trading volume today.

On August 18, the digital payment giant Visa purchased the CryptoPunk 7610 for $150,000, which is also a step towards the Metaverse. Blue-chip NFT collectibles like CryptoPunks, with $752 million in sales, or the $661 million NBA Top Shot, have all skyrocketed in value this year.

In addition, Facebook also announced its entry into the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg said in a remote address to employees that the company's departments focused on communities, creators, commerce, and virtual reality products will increasingly work hard to bring the metaverse to life. into life.

The Metaverse Is an Imagination of Reality

The emergence of metaverse has built a platform for human virtual practice activities, and provided new ways and methods for people to understand the world. It can make our practical activities no longer limited to the real physical space but can be extended to the virtual space.

Virtuality is firstly a reflection of reality, and then it can surpass reality. Just because it is based on reality, virtuality is the mirror image of reality. It uses digitization and calculation to display various real relationships in the material world. There, we can give full play to our imagination, build our own house, create a home on our own land, create a new city with other players, and more importantly, make profits while doing these things.

The Metaverse seems to be a logical continuation of the impossibilities of real practice. Technology has become a new tool for human beings to transform the objective world. It allows us to transfer the regrets and impossibilities in reality to the virtual space for realization. The immersion of the metaverse will give us a feeling of "being there", and the "virtual reality" in reality will also disappear in this immersion. There we achieved a lot of impossibilities in real life, and we tried what we didn't dare to do in life.

How far are we from the metaverse

The metaverse is extremely hot under the hype of capital, but we put aside market sentiment and rationality, has the development of the metaverse reached an ideal state? Can we fully realize the vision of the Metaverse? Will the development of human society eventually move towards the Metaverse?

Let's analyze it rationally. What Metaverse wants to create is an ecology, an idea that can directly map the real world to the virtual world, where you can even do things that the real world cannot do, where the economy, life, work, Socializing and entertainment will be different from the real world. But to achieve all this requires a set of transaction currency, economic order, social rules, institutional choices, and even value orientations that conform to the virtual world. Some people say that it is not difficult to realize all this with the development of technology, but the system, order, and value orientation need to go through long-term discussions and adjustments, and require the participation and support of the entire international community. This will be a long process.

Currently, the metaverse concept projects are far from the ideal form of the metaverse in the strict sense. The two pillars of the metaverse concept: games and NFT cannot satisfy the integrity of the content ecology of the metaverse. Therefore, neither project parties nor ordinary users should blindly chase hot spots. Curiosity and one's own abilities should be transferred to the development route and design strategy of the Metaverse. It paves the way for the subsequent development of the metaverse concept.